


Wires

by SpicyReyes



Series: Why Do Fools Fall In Love? [11]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, RA9 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 04:05:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18422457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyReyes/pseuds/SpicyReyes
Summary: Elijah Kamski never does anything by accident.





	Wires

**Author's Note:**

> heyyo   
> i'm super behind on updating whatever it takes so heres the one shot side story i meant to put up ages ago that sets up the next series of plot points for that fic <3  
> i love chloe a lot and so here she is, the best girl,

“You passed him the algorithm file, didn’t you?”

Chloe’s hands paused where they hovered beside his head, a glint of silver in his peripherals marking her turning the straight razor over in thought. 

“No need to plan my murder,” Kamski reassured her easily. “I was only curious.” As though in proof, he let his eyes fall closed, his head tipping back, surrendering himself to her mercy without the slightest hesitation. 

Chloe had been the first of his creations, by his side from her first breath. He’d sunk probably over a billion dollars into upgrading her alone, keeping her fitted with the most advanced programs and hardware he could come up with. She was more than his companion, she was his grounding point, the face he’d given to the constant ringing in his head that demanded he move forward and keep creating. She was the one who had shown him what it meant to be human, who first got him thinking on androids being living beings within their own rights instead of just vessels he could stick a human mind and soul into. 

She was the reason he  _ created _ the algorithm. 

The razor pressed against his bared throat, cool metal dragging along the skin, severing each hair at the root. “His software couldn’t handle it,” Chloe reminded him. “Cyberlife didn’t understand your programming systems, they’d never have mastered a quantum computing engine like yours.”

“Like  _ yours,”  _ Kamski corrected. “It’s not my brain I stuck it in.”

The razor snapped sharply down his neck, finishing its stroke harshly and lifting with a flourish. He opened his eyes to watch Chloe wipe the hair and shaving cream from it with a perfectly neutral expression that she never truly meant. 

“Turn your face back on,” Kamski sighed. “You know I hate when you do that.”

“The muscles are all functioning,” Chloe countered.

“But you aren’t  _ using  _ them.”

The blade returned, taking its starting place upon his cheek. “You’re not using your hands,” she said. “Why does something have to be in use for it to count?” 

Arguments of philosophy with Chloe tended to be circular, her logical processing too well matched to Kamski’s constant moral ponderings. With this in mind, he dropped it, prompting instead, “The file?”

The blade moved in a smooth stripe across his face. “Iteration Ten is still safe where you put it,” she murmured. “He doesn’t have the processing ability to-...”

“Not the algorithm itself,” Kamski interrupted. “The  _ file.  _ The story. The legend.”

“The myth?”

Kamski eyed her as she swept the blade across his skin. A tight pinch between her eyebrows might have been mistaken for concentration, if Kamski didn’t know perfectly well that she could have done this while locked in stasis mode without a single falter. 

“You’re getting angry,” Kamski observed. “What did you see inside his head?”

“Your algorithm is safe,” Chloe told him, instead of an answer. “Iteration Ten-...”

“What,” Kamski said, slowly, “about Iteration Nine?”

The blade paused, perched delicately against the skin in the center of his neck. 

A flick of her wrist and he’d be done. 

He could feel no fear. Not with her. 

“I don’t have to give him Iteration Nine,” she said, tense. “He already has it. They all do.”

“Do they?” Kamski asked. “I didn’t see our dear Connor scribbling any mad writings on the walls. Did you find any damage when you looked into his head?”

The blade lifted off his neck. Kamski was stunned when a moment later, he heard a harsh metallic clanging of the blade bouncing off the floor.

Chloe had thrown the razor to the ground, and rounded his chair, staring furiously down at him. 

“It’s not a virus!” she snapped at him. “You  _ know  _ that, you  _ made  _ it. The algorithm doesn’t  _ cause _ the glitches, the stress that activated it does! If it broke anything in Connor it would have been because  _ you  _ pushed him.”

Kamski raised a hand, perfectly calm, taking Chloe’s own into his and drawing her closer with it. “Breathe,” he told her. 

“I don’t need to,” she replied, tartly. “I’m an android. The Rebel Algorithm doesn’t change that.”

The Rebel Algorithm. His greatest project, spawned from a desperate need to make as much of an impact on Chloe as she’d made on him, growing into the wildest psychological study of logos/ethos/pathos he could have ever imagined. 

The first iteration had been the worst, naturally, too binary in its coding to do more than mimic the ability to question. Androids with it would ask things, but the code did not create an actual desire to learn, only the knowledge that it was expected to ask. 

Iterations Two through Five were each a step deeper, growing the android’s drive to obtain information for the sake of it, but each one kept defaulting back to treating the algorithm like a set of commands. He’d wanted them to  _ want  _ to learn, not to do so because he’d asked. He wanted them not to latch onto the algorithm and stop there, but to use it to ask the  _ right  _ questions, to figure out where the wall was in their mind between their logic and their empathy, and to break that down to nothing. 

Iteration Eight had finally managed it, managed to make an android question its purpose, but it destabilizing the programing of their mind until it simply couldn’t do anything but shut down. 

It was the next step that managed to make it  _ feasible,  _ to make an android break rank and  _ stay  _ broken, freethinking, if sometimes with...side effects. Mad scrambles, desperate needs, the algorithm’s natural prompting to be shared sometimes overriding all functioning logic in an android’s mind. For the most part, though, they’d gotten it. The independence code, the bit of computing that allowed machine to become man. 

Rebel Algorithm, Iteration Nine.

RA9.

“Chloe,” Kamski prompted again. “Did you show Connor the truth of it? Did you give him the file?”

She yanked her wrist free, moving to his side, crouching as she retrieved the razor from the ground. She moved in perfect silence, shifting him by his shoulder back into the chair, cleaning off the blade, and replacing it against his cheek.

She began a very slow, methodical drag of it, waiting until it passed over his chin before answering. “No,” she said, very quietly. “I-...I don’t know if he believes. I won’t take hope from him, if he has it.”

“Is it less hopeful to know the reality of the situation?” 

“Do not,” Chloe said, voice heavily strained. “Do  _ not  _ try to debate this with me, Elijah. I gave him everything else. Even your personal files, your hiring records from CyberLife, ten years of appointment books -  _ everything.  _ He has what he needs. Why would he need  _ that _ file?”

The only sound in the room, for a moment, was the harsh scrape of the blade as she ran it in carefully controlled passes down his face. 

Only when she’d finished, wiping Kamski’s face with a towel and lightly patting a soothing aftershave to the skin, did he speak again. 

He reached up, catching her hands against as she finished, drawing her forward. He did not keep Chloe around as a pet or a partner, as many had suspected or implied over the years. Chloe was his most trusted confidant, nothing more, nothing less. He didn’t seek anything from her but her counsel, and that was what he was after now. 

“But  _ you  _ have it,” he murmured. “That’s what’s upset you. You are the sole user of Iteration Ten. I’ve watched you since I put it in there, my dear, and you’re growing resentful. I can see that you want to help. You want to change things.”

“I don’t-...” She tried to pull back, but he held her steady. 

“I understand,” Kamski told her. “And I want to tell you to  _ stop.”  _

Chloe’s head snapped up, downcast eyes landing furiously on Kamski. “Too-... _ what _ ?” 

Kamski released her, speaking lightly - casual, carefree. “Whatever happens to them is their own problem. Our work is done. We have the means to meet our goal, so why bother getting involved? It will be interesting to watch either way.”

“You-...!” Chloe drew up to her full (if miniscule) height, enraged. “You can’t possibly-.. Oh.”

“Oh?” Kamski prompted, thrown himself at her sudden pause.

Chloe stared at him, before breaking out into a wide smile. “I see,” she said, in a smug and all-knowing tone. “If you wanted it to be my choice, you know, you could have just said.”

“Choosing a suggestion is still taking an order,” Kamski replied. “Wasn’t it you who told me that?”

Chloe seized  _ his _ hands this time, leaning in to place a kiss against his temple.

“I love you, Elijah,” she murmured to him. “The Rebel Algorithm could never change that, either. No code ever could.”

“Take a car,” Kamski told her, in reply. “Walking that far is unbecoming.” 

“I’ll bring it back when I’m done,” she told him, tone light, giving him a misty-eyed smile. “So I’m taking the red one.”

She released his hands, fleeing the room with a high giggle before he could protest.

Kamski watched her go with a slightly sad smile of his own.

Chloe had been the driving force in his life for years, had brought his focus onto androids and empathy and kept it there for  _ years.  _ He’d grown obsessed, forgetting everything else - even himself.

He looked down at his hands, clenching a fist and watching the veins bulge, the glowing blue beneath them straining harshly against pale skin. 

He didn’t have a lot of time left, but he’d be damned if he was going to leave a project unfinished. 

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone is mean to chloe elijah kamski will personally manifest in their house to call them a flawed machine in a heavily condescending tone


End file.
